


The Shining and Chrome

by Najanaja



Category: Mad Max 1979, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:29:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Najanaja/pseuds/Najanaja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This year is the 35th anniversary of The Shining.  So we're off to the Overlook Hotel, whoops, I mean the Halls of Justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shining and Chrome

There was frost on his helmet in the mornings, so he began taking it to bed. He wore two coats, and wrapped fur on his boots. He found a heavier scarf. Under the dust mask, his nose paled to white when the motorcycle made thirty kilometers per hour. 

“It's so fucking cold. When does it end?” Johnny asked, through the fog and suffocation of the fabric filters.

“Yeah, mate. Cold.” Diabando confirmed. The shaggy blond was bare-faced, but Toecutter had not shouted at _him_. Bandy waved at the thick, powdery sky. “It's all got to fall down. Fall-out, you know? Going to take months, but then it warms up. Bubba looked into it.”

Diabando coughed, and that meant the conversation had ended. He'd be racking and spitting, and then he'd be panting, pale and slick. Johnny helped him down by his bike, and put a bottle of water in his hand. It was one the boy had warmed under his coats, because cold water hurt his gums now. 

Mudguts stepped in. The small man put Diabando's dust mask on his face, over his convulsing mouth, and Bando fought. His panic, however, could not support a brawling style, and Mudguts soon had his mate tamed on the frosty dirt. He rubbed his heaving back, while humming under his own mask. 

Johnny slipped back, and hurried to the side of a large man, crouched in a furry cape and hood of hand-cured pelts. 

“Toecutter.” He spoke carefully, without challenging or pleading. He wouldn't be difficult. He would just ask. 

The hood gusted a cloud of damp, rank smoke, and the man stood. Slow as ice floating, his blue eyes bobbed to the boy's face. “Johnny.”

“”Why here? If it's a good place, why is it empty?” Johnny waved at the black-stroked, fire-cracked walls. “Melbourne's only a couple hours down the coast. What if they got hit?”

Toecutter's lips curved, and he leaned back, the way a cat will when a small thing startles it. “Johnny, do you know what 'global war' means? Do you understand 'global?'”

Johnny touched his dust mask as though adjusting it. “course. course i do.”

“Look, Johnny. Look and listen.” Toecutter clapped a hand on Johnny's head. He dug in, so pain turned to five cold points where he held Johnny's scalp to the bone below. He made Johnny look at Bandy's curled body, made him hear the clogs bubbling in the man's lungs. “We'll be underground here, Johnny. Out of the dust, out of the cold, and off the roads. Now, move your bike in, and Diabando's bike, too.”

Johnny waited for the hand to loosen and shove. Then he hurried to his motorcycle and slipped on, cursing as cold metal touched his thighs. The bike wouldn't start for a long time, coughing and grunting. Once the motor was sucking petrol smoothly, Johnny let it roll in low revolutions, pulling the bike into the gaping gates. 

Two posts of heavy brick were gliding in the sky. The boy looked at one crumbling stack, and clamped the front brake in his hand. He read the metal plate: 

Main Force Patrol  
established 1983. 

He had an urge to pull out his penknife, open the file, and scratch new words: 

burnt to ruins 1985.

He remembered the night sky infested with red flames, and how the glowing windows had faded as the black smog had choked them. He'd stood with Starbuck and Bubba in the courtyard, his shotgun in his wet hands. His mates were calm and quick, so he never took a shot at the runners. That was only natural.

By the building doors, Toecutter prowled with the carcass axe. The fur on his shoulders, his curling mane, and the shape of his body twisted in the fire-wind. He let the runners pass, and toyed with the broken men. 

One strong, broad man had fallen two stories and survived far too long: moving on his burly arms, swinging a fist at the laughing Toecutter. The axe hacked and hacked at the smoking leather on the man's back. It split his hands as he fought, and then the inflamed flesh of his face. 

The man lived, though, and Johnny ran forward, putting the gun muzzle to the burnt head. Even then he wouldn't pull the trigger; he wouldn't take Toecutter's game. Johnny let the man groan until he saw his leader's nod and his shining smile. He looked only at that beloved face as he sent the blast of lead. Toecutter wiped Johnny's eyes for him with gentle thumbs, and kissed his lips.

All the boy's memories shifted to Toecutter then: following him, watching his broad back, his rough hands, his happy face. All were comforting places to look. Then they had mounted the motorcycles and they'd gone. They had never thought to return, until the horizon had flashed white one day, and Bubba had said, “Sydney,” as though they would all understand. 

The pale blond had pulled a small notebook out of his jacket. He'd called out a list of supplies and the men to find them, and he'd told them to secure the old Halls of Justice. Then Bubba had done a thing they had never known him to do. With the whole gang watching, he'd hugged Toecutter long and hard, kissed him, and whispered to him, before going to his bike. 

“Johnny,” Bubba had called, holding the silver helmet in his hands, the motorcycle rumbling under him.

Walking to Bubba, Johnny had folded his arms. The boy stood, and the man sat, and they looked into the curve of the gas tank. In that shining gloss they only saw ripples of one another. When they looked up, they matched gazes honestly.

“Where you going, Bubba?”

The blond had spoken loudly for all the men. “To the station house. I'll meet the road packs there, and organize a move to the Halls. Armalites and salvage, too: we'll be safe underground, and we'll have supplies. Food, ammunition, and medicine. The garage was built as a shelter. Central built many of them. This one they'll have abandoned.”

Bubba had shifted to softer tones. “Johnny, those things you see and hear. There's no shaking them. Your methods, my methods: none of them will work. They'll follow us no matter what.”

Johnny had glared. “What the hell're you saying, Bubba? That I'm crazy, that I'm fucked-”

Bubba had slipped the Mauser pistol out of the holster. “This is my grandfather's gun. He used it in World War I, and he taught me to shoot with it, but he died in the trenches before the gun came to me. When I hold it, my grandfather talks to me. He steadies me, and I never miss.”

“Yeah, then you're mad, you're-”

“You know I'm not. I think of it as Shining, because what I have to hit: It shines so bright. Other things shine for me too: the ghosts that follow, the past that won't end, the future that won't stay distant, and people like you. Those who shine. Do you remember the Bronze?”

“Course I remember the Bronze, but they're gone now. No more Bronze.”

“There's one who follows. The one I shot. He had the Shining stronger than me, stronger than you. I can't lose him. I've told the ghosts ahead and behind to take him, and they do, but they can't hold him. Johnny, watch for him. I'll be back with you soon. Stay sharp so I can watch you, too. Don't get high. It won't help. It will only dull your shine. Not his.”

“Bubba, that's...” Johnny had re-hung his scarf, and touched the lighter. He had 'bad turns' all his life, that was true. He saw ugly things.

Some had happened: Zano and Marmie crumbling in a fireball. The Bronze's woman falling, laying down her body and the child's form, almost catching Toecutter's front wheel, almost wrecking him. Somehow he'd been ready and pulled that power mono. 

Other things hadn't followed: Bubba oozing blood in the road, a hawk picking at his liver. The blokes crunching into the black car, and rolling on the tarmac, spun into the sky and water. Toecutter... Johnny rubbed his face hard.

“For fuck's sake. You knew?” The boy had wrenched at Bubba's jacket, hand sliding on the oilcloth, and the man in black revved the bike hard, jumping away.

**Author's Note:**

> The Mad Max script had a scene of the gang firebombing the MFP headquarters. So here's an AU where it happens, but other things don't. Also Max is a powerful but disordered ghost, and the Halls of Justice are an evil place that Shines, and if the two should come together, the madness will never end. For anyone.


End file.
